It has become a point of debate whether new salmon salmon recovery plan is flexible or flawed. The effort to restore endangered Northwest salmon and steelhead may be coming to a close, depending on what happens today in a Portland courtroom. Federal Judge James Redden will hear the U.S. government’s reasoning behind its most recent fish recovery plan, and plan opponents also will testify.
According to conservation and fishing groups the plan doesn’t do enough to save the fish and relies too heavily on emergency backup measures if wild fish numbers continue to decline. The also said that there are ways to bring that economy back, but they will require change to the status quo way of running the river. There’s room enough for all – but not if we keep doing the same old things.
Former Oregon State University professor Jane Lubchenco, who now heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the federal agency responsible for the fish plan, will attend the hearing. She added that the new salmon recovery plan flexible and effective. Commercial fishermen and guides from Alaska to California also have arrived in Portland. She hopes and realizes that the plan the Administration has proposed is deeply flawed.
